I knew he was coming toward me without even looking up. The sound of big, heavy boot-steps announced his arrival.
Courtesy of Keith Moore
A friendly twang called out my name. I look up to see him towering above me at 6-feet-2-inches and dressed in blue jeans and cowboy boots, with a black cowboy hat and old dark gray T-shirt with “CASH” printed neatly in the middle. He also wore a white and grey beard with square black sunglasses over his brown eyes. His arms were wide open, already outstretched for a hug to greet me.
“Keith?” I asked.
“Hey!” he said, embracing me. “Nice to finally see you!”
Keith Moore is quite the character. He’s a singer, a poet, a gentleman and, most recently, a truck driver. I know his poems from his Facebook page, which he usually shares with a personal or inspiring photo. I noticed he brought a stack of CDs, all with music he wrote and performed himself, just for me. It’s obvious just from looking at him: there’s a lot to this guy. After he’s grabbed his coffee, we start talking. We began, of course, at the beginning.
Moore was supposed be a Mississippi native, but due to the circumstances of his birth, he is a Northerner by default.
“I was born in Elgin, Illinois, but all my family is from central Mississippi, a little place called Louieville, Mississippi. It’s spelled ‘Louieville’ but they pronounce it ‘Louisville’ so. And uh, a little town called Noxapader. Those were kind of the areas where all my family is from.”
“When my mother was pregnant with me, my father was working in Chicago. And Elgin is a little suburb. And she went up to visit him and I was premature.”
“So you were supposed to be born here?” I asked.
“Yeah, I was supposed to be born in Mississippi, but I was born a Yankee. I can’t help it,” he laughed. “But I was never there long. I had some family. I still have a couple of cousins that live up there.”
You’d be out of your mind to call Moore anything but a Southerner.
“But, like you said, you didn’t stay long,” I said.
“No, but I was raised my whole life pretty much around Louieville, and then Meridian, Mississippi, and then East Texas,” said Moore. “My dad moved out there when my parents divorced, when I was 12. So I kind of went back and forth from Henderson, Texas, East Texas and Mississippi.”
Wherever Moore was, there were always horses nearby. They’ve had a huge impact on his life since before he could even walk, and he credits them for helping him through some creative dry spells.
“Everything a horse is just vibrates in me,” he said. “I don’t know how to put it, but it’s like when I’m around them I just have this real sense of peace and this sense of joy in a way. And when I was away from them for so long, and then I got to be back with them again when we were living in Tennessee, and I was writing songs in Nashville, I went to work for King Stables, which was just beautiful. They boarded jumpers and warm bloods and these big, huge horses. In the back they had their quarter horse farm, and I got my way into training horses with them. And oh, God, that was just a dream. You know, writing songs is what I was doing, but, boy, working with horses, that got me through a long dry spell of songwriting.”
Still, Moore won’t say he’s a cowboy if you ask him. Even though he worked breaking in horses, he said, you can’t call yourself a cowboy. According to him, someone else has to do that for you.
What Moore can call himself, however, is a poet and a songwriter.
“When I was 14 I wrote my first song,” he grinned. “It was called ‘Our Song.’ Very sappy love song. But, uh, my mom and I were real poor. She worked three or four jobs, and I started working when I was 14 or 13, and uh, music for me, after my parent’s divorce…you know growing up, my dad and I, we always listed to Merle Haggard, Buck Owens and Johnny Cash, and you know, all the greats, Glenn Campbell, Charley Pride– that was the music of my childhood. And then I had a cousin who introduced me to a band called Bread. Have you ever heard of Bread?”
I tell him I have.
“It was just so different. And I hardly ever listened to the Beatles, hardly ever. Not until I got into my late teens, early 20s really. I mean, I listened to Bob Dylan…but he introduced me to a different world. So I think after my parent’s divorce, music became kind of like it.
“I started a band, a bunch of guys from Meridian called Blue Haze, and we did a lot of covers– that’s all we did– and we’d sing songs like ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘Ridin the Storm Out’ by REO Speedway, and I never learned any of the verses. I knew the chorus, but I would make up the verses.”
Courtesy of Keith Moore
“I think that’s what kind of got me, led me to start writing my own songs. And so when I was 14, I wrote that song about a girl named Becky,” he said with a grin. “And somehow, my mother– crazy mom that she’s always been– she found a way to get me into a studio.”
Moore sits back and takes a sip of his coffee, a smile spreading across his face at the memory of him in the recording studio.
“First song I ever wrote I recorded in a little studio in Meridian. I still have the little reel-to-reel of it. And I’ve just been writing ever since. I’ve written thousands of songs, probably. I’ve done so much over the years.”
“What was it like when you recorded it when you were 14? Do you remember?” I ask him.
“Oh gosh, I just remembered. Yeah!” he said and smiled. I could see the memories rushing back to him.
“First of all, I didn’t know what I was doing. I remember there were these two guys; they both had really long hair. You know, this was…let’s see; I was 14…so this would have been 1977. And I remember going in, and I came and sat on the stool, and I played and sang at the same time. And I’ve always done that, ever since. Never put guitar tracks down and then sing. Well, I’ve done it a couple times, but I don’t like it. I like to play and sing at the same time; it’s a different feeling. I just remember thinking ‘This is so cool. This is what I want to do with my life.’ At 14, I knew what I wanted to do. I want to write songs and record them. I got the bug early.”
The bug has stayed with Moore ever since. After he and his wife, Renee, married in 1986, Moore moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he played in a band called the Wineskins.
“We still record,” Moore said. “We put out an album in 2013.”
They also recently recorded a new album just last week on Nov. 18, 19 and 20 at Tweed Recording here in Oxford. As a band, the Wineskins have enjoyed a decent amount of success, despite never having been signed to any major record label.
Courtesy of Keith Moore
“We got offers for record deals, but we never felt right about any of them,” Moore said. “It was very frustrating.”
Still, Moore’s music has found its way out into the world. He released a total of seven albums, including the two with the Wineskins. His music is deeply emotional, and his voice is deep and smooth. At times his lyrics take on a kind of spiritual tone; not religious, though Moore is a converted Catholic. Rather, his lyrics and poems speak to the soul in an almost natural way, different than any gospel or psalm ever could.
Moore’s music sounds a bit more heavily composed than what you might expect to hear around a campfire after a long day of cattle driving, but it resonates a certain nostalgia for ranch life that is rare to find. It’s more complex, but then again, so is Moore.
Moore’s wife, Renee, also calls herself his biggest critic and biggest fan when it comes to his music and other writings.
“His songs have always moved me,” she said. “I would rather listen to his CDs than anyone else’s. He speaks volumes in what he writes, and I have always been amazed at how he expresses such deep but relevant thoughts in such a beautiful way.”
She calls Moore a “true artist … not just someone who knows how to write.”
“Every song or poem flows out with seemingly little effort,” she said. “And his lyrics have made me laugh, cry and ponder. Whether it’s a song or a poem, it comes from his heart.”
He’s a well spoken and deeply emotional man who finds comfort in connecting to the earth and expression with his words. He’s a writer and a poet at heart, but a true Southern Renaissance man, too. But he’s always found time to write songs and make music, and he never gives up on his dreams.
“I’ve been working since I was 14,” said Moore. “I’ve cleaned carpets, hung Sheetrock, laid hardwood floors, waited tables, broke horses, sold cars, sold smoking pipes, written songs in Muscle Shoals and Nashville, and now I’m driving 18-wheelers.”
And just like Renee said, Moore always writes from his heart.
“I’ve been writing since I was 14,” he said. “My writing is not explainable. It just happens.”
